Open Government Directive Experiment Wraps up July 6

On Monday, July 6, the Obama administration plans to conclude the third and final phase of its innovative online process to solicit public participation in the creation of an Open Government Directive. The process is the first of its kind for public involvement in executive branch policymaking.

The ultimate goal of this collaborative online effort is to create recommendations for the Open Government Directive, a policy document that will guide agency transparency. The effort combines the online process with a traditional input process, enabling interested organizations and individuals to provide ideas and feedback to the Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) as it works to develop recommendations for the directive. Numerous parties, including technology firms such as Google, have utilized the new online tools to provide their open government recommendations to OSTP.

The first phase of the process was an online "brainstorming" session, which utilized a new media tool designed by the National Academy of Public Administration (NAPA) to solicit ideas from the public and rank them with votes. According to an analysis [1] published by NAPA, the website received over 1,100 ideas and 46,000 votes.

The second phase was a "discussion" session that occurred on the OSTP blog. The week-long process centered on daily topics for which the public was invited to give feedback and discuss the ideas generated during Phase I.

The third and final phase involves an online collaborative writing tool – the MixedInk wiki [2] – that allows users to submit proposals and edit the proposals of others into new versions. The site also allows the rating of developed recommendations. This phase was initially scheduled to run one week and end on June 28, but the administration extended it seven days due to increased participation late in the week.

The third phase is more targeted than any of its predecessors and includes increased moderation. The online tool breaks down each of the administration’s open government principles into specific subtopics – five on transparency, five on collaboration, and three on participation. OSTP poses pointed questions for each subtopic and allows for additional ideas in each area to be submitted in open discussion forums. Off-topic recommendations can be flagged, reviewed, and subsequently moved to a different site. These are features that were not present in the previous phases, suggesting that the administration is improving its use of online tools.

The administration is expanding its use of social media tools in several other areas of policymaking, as well. On June 29, the Public Interest Declassification Board (PIDB) launched a week-long Declassification Policy Forum blog to gather public input on other transparency policies, such as declassification. PIDB is utilizing the OSTP website for this purpose.

The usefulness of new media tools for policy discussions is debatable. The forums have attracted individuals who are adamantly focused on a single transparency issue, such as securing the release of records pertaining to UFO’s, while other comments are completely off-topic, such as those that focus on the legalization of marijuana or investigating the president’s birth certificate. Beth Noveck, the government’s Deputy Chief Technology Officer, insists [3], however, that with the right framework, these tools can adequately keep the discussion on track and provide a useful forum for those inside and outside the Beltway to engage in the public policy process.